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Web Only / Features » July 29, 2008

Gunning for the Prize (cont’d)

Iraqi Army’s setback in Basra: a Tet offensive moment?

In terms of elite opinion and how they interpreted the Iraq government’s military setback in Basra [where in early April 1,000 Iraqi troops and police quickly deserted and some joined al-Sadr’s militias, U.S. air support was required], do you think it was anything like a Tet offensive moment, where leading policy makers and media figures in the U.S. recognize that the war is unwinnable and too costly?

I don’t think it was anything like the Tet offensive [when National Liberation Front forces in South Vietnam launched a surprise offensive in 1968, seizing dozens of cities and attacking the U.S. Embassy for several days]. It could never be interpreted sensibly in the U.S. and has been kind of wiped out of history. What happened with the Tet offensive, there was no historical parallel…

…I can”t think of any popular uprising against an invasion that comes close to Tet. Yet you can’t discuss it in those terms in the United States. The only question asked was, did the U.S. succeed?

The real issue is what it means to have a population so organized to such an extent against an overwhelming military force. Well, U.S. business leaders could figure it out for themselves, and Tet did make them understand.

There was another factor: the U.S. had pretty much accomplished its mission. Contrary to Iraq, the U.S. didn’t need to conquer Vietnam because of its resources or strategic position or anything like that. But they wanted to ensure that it didn’t create a model of successful independence for, say, Indonesia, which did matter, or for other nations of South Asia, including ultimately Japan, the super-domino, as it was called by Asia historian John Dower…

So the other “dominoes” were already protected? [U.S. policymakers defended the war in Vietnam with the “domino theory,” whereby stopping the insurgency in Vietnam was called vital to prevent the rest of Asia from “going Communist.]

The domino theory is constantly revived because it is correct. People ridicule it, but they’re ridiculing the public version designed to frighten people. The public version is that Ho Chi Minh or Daniel Ortega [Sandinista leader of Nicaragua] or someone is going march on the U.S. and rape your grandmother. That’s the public version.

But the domino theory does apply to independent nationalism, which Henry Kissinger called a “virus” that can infect others, leading them to be independent of the U.S., so you’ve got to watch out. Independent or “radical” nationalism means that they don’t follow our orders. So independent nationalism must be stamped out. That’s the rational version of the domino theory. It’s the basis for almost every intervention.

Now Iraq is totally different. You can’t destroy it [in terms of oil resources], it’s much too valuable. Iraq is a prize, much too valuable to be just an example. It is to be a client state in the world’s oil producing region. Iraq has maybe the world’s second-largest oil reserves in the world. It’s a real prize, totally different than Vietnam. Pulling out would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. That’s why neither of the political parties is seriously contemplating it.

Vietnam was an entirely different matter than Iraq. And the American business community understands that too.

With Iraq, the reasons have been clearly stated, but you don’t find discussion of this in the press. It’s there if you take a look at the Bush-Maliki Declaration of November. Maliki is the prime minister of Iraq even though he doesn’t rule much beyond the Green Zone. Patrick Cockburn describes Maliki’s government as “universally loathed.”

The agreement is an interesting one. It essentially says that the U.S. can maintain a military presence there as long as it wants, including the military bases, huge ones. They aren’t built to be dismantled. It includes what’s called an embassy in Baghdad, which is actually a city inside a city. That also is not being built to be dismantled. The U.S. forces are to be there indefinitely, protecting Iraq from external aggression and insuring its internal security. Well, the only threat of external aggression is from the United States, except for maybe Israel, but that’s not what they meant. “Internal security” means maintaining a client state like Russia in Chechnya.

If a government happens to get in that asks the U.S. to leave, the U.S. will still stay to protect internal security, and you know what that means. The agreement goes on to say, rather brazenly, that the economy must be open to foreign investment, privileging U.S. investors. [Editor’s note: Exxon, Mobil, Total and BP are now negotiating for no-bid concessions on Iraqi oil.] A pretty brazen statement of imperial goals. What they’re saying is that you have to let outside powers exploit your resources, with the U.S. in the lead. Now that’s a more extreme criticism of the U.S. invasion than the anti-war movement produced, and it’s coming from the White House.

In fact, Bush underscored it in January with one of his famous signing statements. Bush said that he won’t accept any legislation that bans a permanent US military presence in Iraq or constrains U.S. exploitation of resources. No more debate…

[Editor’s note: However, there are growing signs of powerful Iraqi opposition to U.S. presence beyond Dec. 31.]

Will Democrats end the war?

Q. If Barack Obama wins the presidential election, where will we wind up in Iraq? [Obama supports “withdrawal,” but wants to carry on diplomatic and humanitarian functions, plus enough forces to guard them, plus an embassy the size of the Vatican City, the Baghdad airport, and U.S. bases.] In effect, Democrats are talking about a pretty considerable force remaining, are they not?

Their proposals are pretty vague, but pretty much like the Democratic proposal passed a year ago by Congress. It was analyzed by a U.S. general, Kevin Ryan. He called that essentially a “re-missioning” of the war, [not a withdrawal].

Taboo topics

One of the issues you talk about considerably in Failed States, Perilous Power, and What We Say Goes is that there are some taboo topics in the U.S. media regarding the Iraq War. One of the them is the toll of Iraqi civilians caused by the U.S. occupations, estimated at around one million by the Opinion Research Business’ survey of households.

The most recent estimate I’ve seen is about 1.03 million extra deaths in Iraq, by what are probably conservative estimates because of areas where the pollsters couldn’t go.

“How many were killed?” is the wrong question. When we talk about our enemies, we ask, “How many have died for which they are responsible? How many are dead due to things like starvation that they caused?” But the media aren’t looking at that in Iraq.

For someone like Pol Pot, we would be asking how many have died because of his policies.

Another taboo topic is public opinion in Iraq, which is something that you have studied a lot in terms of polling results. [The unpopularity of the U.S. and its troops reached 90 percent in 2004 among Iraqis, as Chomsky notes in Failed States]. Why are these taboo topics?

What we should ask is, should Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz be put on trial for war crimes?

Why not? The Iraqis seem to think so. The Iraqis believe that the U.S. is responsible for the sectarian violence and atrocities, and that it should get out. That means that the Iraqis are following the principles of the Nuremberg judgment.

We hanged Nazis as war criminals on the basis of their aggression. Aggression is called the “supreme international crime,” encompassing all that follows. Therefore, why don’t we apply the Nuremberg principles to ourselves? The question is so deeply hidden that it would be incomprehensible to the educated classes [in America].

To answer your question: George Orwell gave the basic explanation in the unpublished introduction to Animal Farm that was found in his papers after his death. He writes that the book satirizes totalitarian societies, but that his readers should recognize that in free England, unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. That results in part from the fact that the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. And in part because if you’re well educated, you have instilled in you an unquestioning acceptance of the words of the powerful. Oversimplified, but essentially accurate.

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and University of Illinois visiting professor in Labor Education.
Roger's work has appeared in numerous national publications, including Z magazine, Dollars & Sense, The Progressive, Progressive Populist, Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Yes! and Foreign Policy in Focus.
More of his work can be found at zcommunications.org/zspace/rogerdbybee.

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"Well to be fair, one might wish to recall that the country was pretty dysfunctional before the invasion."
etcetera etcetera
Oh Wolf. It's sad to see you are still flogging the same old points about the illegal attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq. Pretty soon I expect you will be calling it the other good war.
Getting back to your assertion that Iraq was dysfunctional ... surely you are aware that before 1991 US led hostilities against Iraq it was one of the most modernized countries in the region? It was only after the '91 war and subsequent sanctions (which likey killed many more innocent civilians than the war itself) coupled with the so called no fly zones and the accompanying low level bombing campaigns that the country of Iraq was rendered dysfunctional .
"Well now, if a cop breaks into a house and stops a rape, then is that a worse crime too?"
Puhhhhlease spare me this drivel! If we want to talk about crimes lets talk about the war crime committed every time an American or British soldier uses a depleted uranium bullet/bomb.Posted by Jiminy Cricket on 2008-08-07 22:31:08

Yeah, I think you're right, Nevada. I'm over 40 now, and what "never ceases to amaze me" is how "polite" conversation (even among leftish/alternative "Nation"-reader type of folks) turns on just this point. Everyone has to sort of agree that the US is a "force for good in the world" (etc.). See Obama's "Audacity," for example. He quickly states that he tuned in to the exact moment, in college dorm conversations, where things get "too" victim-ish and blame-America-first-ish. He's not into that, he writes (signal to the establishment: I won't engage Israel/Palestine or Venezuela, Cuba, or whatever country in a FUNDAMENTALLY different or critical way). I.e. if "we" could have (e.g.) "done" Iraq in a nicer, SMARTER way, THEN "we" would be so much better off (blah, blah, blah). Chomsky's critique has truly been the most MORAL, based on commonly held assumptions. For example: you can't just invade a country and say "well, 'the world is better off w/o Saddam Hussein, so there'" and feel like that wins the argument. The "Nation" readership? They will say (in conversation with young vets, FOX newsfans, and whomever) "yeah, we/the world ARE 'better off,' BUT, it could have 'been handled' so much better." The RIGHT
TO AGGRESSION: as long as it's "handled" well, as long as it WINS, as long as it can be SOLD as "moral"-- very few question that. -- This explains why so many who are progressives know about and mention and cite Chomsky, but precious few really read him, and so many get drawn into these morally repulsive presuppositions . . .Posted by mffanaddict on 2008-08-03 21:30:17

Congratulations to ITT for running the Chomsky interview. Too many articles, in both the alternative and mainstream press, are based on a merely tactical critique of the war ("is it working?") instead of a fundamental critique: we have no right to invade and occupy Iraq.Posted by Nevada_Ned on 2008-08-03 10:34:09

I take up wolf's remarks one by one
hopefully wolf can read this and think about it
re: "we've just destroyed the country . . . " wolf blithely says the country was "pretty dysfunctional" already. Say that's true. Out of about 28 million, as a result of the war about 1 million were killed, and 4 million were made refugees (half inside the country, half outside). By wolf logic, since it was "pretty dysfunctional" the extreme carnage caused by us is of little moment, couldn't possibly constitute destroying the country.
"if we apply . . . worse crime." wolf likens the US invasion and occupation to "stop[ping] a rape." How is that? We invaded to improve their lot, create freedom, he says. Really? Bush said it was to stop Saddam from getting WMD (he said it over and over). UN inspectors were going anywhere, anytime and not finding anything; Bush basically forced the inspectors out by moving in and bombing/invading the place. By wolf logic, it's true by DEFINITION that the US is trying to impose/instill "freedom." What's the substance of the "freedom"? Is it Freedom to be divided and ruled?
"leading them ... watch out." Wolf needs some background on the Cold War, the concept of the Domino Effect, and Chomsy's take on the Domino Effect. You see, during the Cold War, the idea was that the Russians take Vietnam today, then Japan (say) tomorrow. Many liberals downplayed this as exaggeration. Chomsky said No, there IS a "domino effect," actually, and that's the threat of "independent nationalism," meaning, the Vietnamese take charge of their own affairs, and the next thing you know it's Guatemalan peasants and lord knows who else doing it, too. THAT'S what the US wanted to stomp out (it had nothing to do with stopping the Russians, that was the excuse). No one ever said that e.g. USSR control over e.g. Czechoslovakia was in itself a "domino" or "domino effect" (what could that mean, Wolf?).
Wolf raises a hypothetical (viz., but what IF Iraq had obtained nukes?!). Pretty hard for it to do, actually, given that the US controlled the airspace, and given the intrusive inspections going on, etc. Colin Powell himself said, a few months before 9/11, that Saddam was "in his box," contained, not a threat to us. And it was pretty unlikely Saddam Hussein would try to acquire WMD, given that he'd ordered the stuff destroyed in 1994 or so. Saddam Hussein knew he'd be inviting a strike if he came close to developing major WMD. Also, he was trying to get out from under sanctions, precisely by allowing intrusive inspection to certify Iraq as WMD free (late '90s). (Finally, you think he'd "give" WMD to Al Qaeda?! Those guys hated him, and might have used it against him, for all he knew.)
Re: this hypothetical about nukes, you can always use it. E.g. What if Uzbekistan got a nuke? Scary! Let's invade Uzbekistan!
re: the last comment on the "wired" world. What's naive is to think that just because information can be "put out there" that that means much. What's crucial is the DOMINANT frame of discourse. Example: politicians ("left" Democrats vs. "right" Republicans) debate on CNN or FOX about the meaning of the "success of the Surge." This presupposes that it's a success, and furthermore, that if it really is a success, then that's a GOOD thing. The presupposition is INSTILLED in the very discussion. Result? If Chomsky were to go on CNN and say "that the Surge 'worked' is all the more reason to oppose it," he (truly) would NOT BE UNDERSTOOD by his interviewers.
Finally, the "79 year-old" wisecrack is frankly AGEIST, just as saying "that comment might be ok for a woman" would be SEXIST.Posted by mffanaddict on 2008-07-30 23:35:43

re: wolfy comments
Yes it was dysfunctional by a decade of illegal sanctions enforced by the US, one might wish to remember that as well. And your agrument for pre-emptive war falls to pieces.."if a cop breaks into a house and stops a rape....is that a worse crime?"
If you want to apply the Iraq war to this twisted logic it would be better to say "If a cop bombs a house where he thinks a rape might be happening...is that a worse crime ?"
How about that fact that the US sold Hussein his weapons arsenal in the 1980's is a worse crime no ? the ones he used against Kurds and the Iranians ? "how many excess deaths would occur if Iraq had obtained nukes and either used them directly or provided them to anti-west groups?" Iraq never had nukes and this is a well documented fact, along with the threat to the US which was never there until the illegal invasion, although if you watch FOX news you wouldnt know that. I wouldnt call Chomskys comments humorous or naive unless you have the resume and the intelligence he has, which i doubt judging by your comments. You probably think Iraq was behind 911 right ? hahaPosted by deezy on 2008-07-30 12:01:14